Moon as Ovum and Other Surprises

I was a little bleary this morning. There was, after all, some kind of once in 500-years total lunar eclipse, the slowest ever bla bla bla...I don't pay much attention to the various  distinguishing human markers slapped on every celestial event, but I was excited about seeing the moon in an altered state. There was a mackerel sky in force upon my retiring, and I had high hopes it would break up by the time the eclipse got going. 

My brain, naturally, woke me at 1:30 AM, 2:33 AM. and 3:47 AM. Each time I got up to look. Finally, at 3:47, the clouds had cleared and I had to run to the west side of the house to find the moon. It was worth it.

I couldn't shake the impression that it was not a moon; it was an ovum. It looked watery, diaphanous. It looked like it would jiggle like an egg yolk if you poked it. There it was floating in the vast womb of the sky, waiting for something to come swimming along and make something of it. It was unfinished, protoplasmic. I was riveted. Penumbra. That's what the disc is called, right? Even that sounds like a reproductive term.

It was very difficult to photograph, especially without a tripod. I should have digiscoped it, but fussing with a scope, tripod and phone adaptor at 4:05 am was just not something I could handle. I couldn't even deal with finding socks for my freezing feet. So I sat down on the ground, leaned against a cold concrete retaining wall, steadied myself, and shot some lousy photos. I kind of like this one, that includes the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, in the upper right corner. Orion was bold and bright, but he was caught up in the twigs of a birch and I had no hope of capturing him. I have a sort of crush on Orion. At least he makes me smile each time I run into him.

I went back upstairs and it was getting light when I finally drifted back to sleep. I opened my eyes again at 6:55 AM. Four wakeups feels like a lot, even for me. Still, getting to enjoy the celestial events (that always happen at miserable hours) is one of the very few benefits of chronic insomnia. 

Who could be droopy and sorry, though, when this is waiting for them in the living room upon arising? 

We call this Wide Stance. He assumes it when he is asserting himself. Such a guy. I'm very proud of Curtis because a quick check-in at the vet's today showed that he has dropped more than four pounds! He's a lithe 43.4 lb. and I am delighted about that. It's all about the crispy fall weather. Running weather. And run he does. I can't believe my companion is 7 now. Where do the years go? Well, we started the clock at Year 4. That's most of it. How I wish I could have loved him from Day One. But his life experience has made him the dog he is. He is the Most Wonderful Dog.

            

I walked out the meadow with him. First, there had to be zooms, and hiding. He doesn't hide himself very well; I think he thinks I'm blind.  He hides the way an adult hides from a baby. He lets me find him.

       

We went out the orchard next, and I got an idea. After a slowly spectacular near-total lunar eclipse, well, there might just be another surprise out there. Yes! The first frostflowers of winter 2021! The red blackberry leaf says it all. It's still fall, and they're already out.

I was so intrigued. There was a freshness, a pristinity to them I hadn't seen before. I think these are the earliest frostflowers I've ever found. Please click on each photo, because the detail is so beautiful, and these photos are so small.

One American dittany plant, its stems splayed, a flower on each one!

Being so fresh, and the first, these were tight, beautifully formed, close curling flowers. This one looks like a cone shell.

I almost threw this photo away before I saw the only in-focus part: a frost flower just forming in the rightmost dark stem! Wow! Do click on the photo to see what I mean. The stem is split, and the flower is just starting to protrude.

This one reminded me of Casper the Ghost's friend. Elmore? I can't remember his name. I love the way they're rising up into the frigid morning light. OooooOOoooOooo

There's something so delicious about seeing fresh frostflowers with green grass blades.

For those new to my blog, you can get the whole story on frostflowers and why they form at this post:

http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2020/11/finding-frost-flowers.html

Please note that in this post, I had the plant incorrectly identified as pennyroyal when it is in fact American dittany. I was in the right family (mint), but it took awhile to ID the plant from the withered remains I found. I'm also bemused that last year's post is from November 22...pretty much right on target. See, that's the great thing about getting older. You forget when stuff happened, so everything is fresh and new all the time! Here I was thinking these were my first November frostflowers. Well, they're earlier by maybe two days...

This is a much better post about frostflower origins:

http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2020/12/fairy-skirts-for-christmas.html

It's devilishly difficult to photograph American dittany (Cunila origanoides) complete with frosty skirts because the stems are hair-thin and just vanish in the clutter. But those small paired green leaves belong to the frostflower plant!

It's wonderful to get down and close with them, especially when there are still green leaves about.

Yes, it was a frostflower morning, and a fine one. Everything old is new again. I am continually amused by the wonders laid out for me to find. For that I am continually thankful. 

I made my way back up the orchard from the gasline cut where the dittany dances. I had long since misplaced Curtis; he was giving occasional bays from deep in Orchid Valley, safely in the middle of my land, and that was fine. 

I walked very slowly as the orchard was seething with birds. Gleaming cedar waxwings in the tulip tops, preening and cuddling. I love a bird that will sit touching shoulders with its friends. 

The winter wren that chimps at me every time I walk past Bill and Elsa's graves. 

And hermit thrushes. Man, do we have the hermits this year. I have a way of talking to them that, if I'm very patient and lucky, often results in their singing a few phrases. They're pretty territorial in winter, I guess, because my pitiful imitations of their songs and a much better imitation of their tchup! call bring them right in. Today, after much waiting, I was rewarded with November songs. Ahhhh how that conjures the boreal forest for me, even as I stare into a miserable tangle of Japanese honeysuckle in Appalachia. I do adore these little elves of the thicket. I'm so grateful they stay the winter here. All hail sumac and honeysuckle fruit; withered grapes and the odd snail or slug. 

                  

I've been wanting to blog for a very long time, but just couldn't pull the trigger. I'm too busy. Crazy to imagine someone living in the middle of the woods being too busy to blog, but there you go. New ventures, new directions, good things. I miss writing to you. I especially wrote this one for Jeanne. 

I'll leave you with a Towertop Sunset. Sound up for a bonus white-throated sparrow, rambling adorably. Dootin-doo-doo, feelin' groovy! in a sparrowy kind of way. 

                  

My House's Facelift

As noted before, the old garage was looking awfully tatty with its new blue roof--lipstick on a pig! So in came the crew to replace the siding with HardiePlank. Much of the cheap board and batten siding was rotted or hopelessly warped, so they replaced it, largely with plywood they found in the garage. I was glad in this instance that Bill saved so much stuff.

Oh it was wonderful to watch that garage being transformed.

To drive up and see this!

To climb the tower and see this!

and to walk out the meadow, turn around and see this!

A badly needed new door, painted my favorite shade of purply-blue. I couldn't match the roof, so I went for what I loved.

Cedar siding put on in 1999 was hideously rotted on the north side of the house, and peeling and weather-beaten on the south and west sides. Daniel tore it off with his bare hands until I begged him to stop. Never mind--it would all be replaced soon.

I was pretty much done with wood. Bring on the cement composition HardiePlank! 

In mid-February 2020, I went to Ecuador. Remember international travel? I do, dimly. The Amish team timed their work to coincide with my absence, so all the hammering and banging wouldn't disturb me. I can tell you that, in my experience, nobody but the Amish works on outside house renovation in January and February. 

Daniel had purchased the siding in advance and painted it under controlled conditions, as well, which helps a lot!

Upon my return, I beheld a tower transformed, secure.

They were good, they were affordable, and they were fast. Got in, did the work, got out. Boom. Fueled, perhaps in part, by this:

If I drank that I'd be awake for a month.

In this video, Curtis perfectly expresses how it felt to come home after a long trip and find the siding on garage and tower magically finished. I am so grateful to Daniel Yoder and Amish Builders of Patriot, Ohio for their wonderful work; for their speed, professionalism and efficiency. You've spoiled me for good.

           

In Case You Missed It

photo by Anne Babcock

 

 In Case You Missed It: Which, of course, all but about 60 people did...but let's consider what it's like to have 60 people arrive in your yard on a sprinkly, trying-to-be-fine Saturday noon. It's a trip, that's what it is! I'll confess that I spent several weeks in preparation for the Indigo Hill Garden Tour and Plant Sale, thinking of all the things that need to be thought of when that many people come to visit.
 Things that I'd not paid much attention to before suddenly loomed large. Here, purple coneflowers are struggling to raise their pretty heads above all the sumac in the prairie patch. We can't have that! The Garden Tour is coming!

  Some weeding was effected. I started off clipping the sumac with a pruner, but later figured out that I could pull it and break it off at ground level. It wasn't easy, but it was a lot faster than clipping.

 

Piles of sumac formed all along the borders of the bed. Why, I could do this every year. Maybe I can take the prairie patch back from the sumac. Mowing doesn't do much; just makes the sumac shorter. The spreading roots remain, ready to throw shoots up and keep on walking in their inexorable takeover of the entire bed. If I pull it in midsummer, then mow in March, maybe I can discourage it a bit.

 

I wouldn't say it was fun, but it was satisfying to slow the sumac down and reveal all the marvelous composites that are blooming their heads off in the prairie patch. 

  

The brushpile grows and melts, grows and melts. I dump head-high piles on it and they just go away.

  

Gray sunflower (a prairie native), with tickseed sunflower and ironweed, among many others. There's coneflower, partridge pea and even a little liatris in there. When I was done, I threw about a dozen seed spikes of my garden liatris in like javelins, as a final salute to native takeover.

Back to the event planning: I knew I couldn't lead two garden tours and cook, so Phoebe suggested a 12-5 pm time frame. As an inveterate nurturer, I needed to be released from the obligation of feeding everyone, or catering the event would be all I'd do. Been there, done that. This was going to be different, and a whole lot more fun for me. No food, I declared. Herb tea. And Anne and Phoebe added the cookies.  Perfect!

The day dawned rainy and humid, the tuberoses going wild with fragrance. I still had to set up my plant shop and bookstore, get the kitchen and studio ready to receive, finish some weeding,  make some signs, and get myself clean. An angel had arrived the evening before in my dear friend Anne, shown here marveling at the touch of bluebird feet five years back. This is still my favorite picture of Anne, lost in the magic of being chosen by bluebirds.

Anne arrived like the angel she is, unbidden, but ready to work, and bearing two enormous containers of home-made cookies: Chocolate Crinkle and her grandmother's crispy sugar cookie recipe. They were amazing. And thank goodness, because everyone lit up when they saw the platters, and the ice-cold herb tea I'd made for days in advance. I used the pineapple sage, spearmint and lemon verbena from the Heritage garden, sweetened with leaves from my longsuffering Stevia plant. Just three leaves will sweeten an entire quart. It doesn't have to be a full lunch, but nice refreshments are mandatory. 

Other guests brought gorgeous shortbread and brownies. We all ran on sugar all afternoon. 

Photo by Anne Babcock

The other absolute essential was my beautiful Phoebe, who not only kept me sane, but cleaned the greenhouse, vacuumed the whole house (including the tower), baked a big batch of Italian wedding cookies, then attended to several small children who came, showing them where to get golden raspberries and Stevia and other delicious treats around the gardens. There were two adorable infants among the garden fans, and Phoebe gave them lots of loving attention. She helps where she's needed. She gets my crazy and reels me in when I'm spinning. I love her so.

photo by Anne Babcock

This is what it looked like around 12:30 when the first tour started. My dear friend Dawn Hewitt --managing editor at Bird Watcher's Digest-- volunteered--imagine! to put herself on parking duty, staying out at the end of the driveway. She asked everyone who was able to, to park out on the township road, and walk in the driveway. Those who needed to could park on the lawn. We figured the yard wouldn't be very scenic if it was chock full of automobiles.  It worked great, with a few umbrellas for the noontime showers. Thank you, Dawn!!!

photo by Anne Babcock

We staged at the porch, and I yakked about plants and horticulture and gardening practices, moving from one thing to the next, and it was tons of fun. Here, I'm cradling my dwarf pomegranate, which put on extra flowers and a nice ripe red fruit for the party. I explained how I trained it into a bonsai pot over a series of years and prunings of both root and top.

photo by Anne Babcock

Admiring the scarlet runner bean gifted to me by my friends Carol and Daniel way back on March 9, when I was speaking to the Burroughs Nature Club. Carol handed me these three Jack and the Beanstalk lookin' seedlings in a half-gallon pot. When I expressed my doubt that I could keep them happy for another two months until it was safe to plant them out, she said, "Don't you have a greenhouse?" 

I replied, "Yes, and it's tiny and stuffed full!"

Somehow I managed to keep it going, looping all around the inside of the greenhouse and I'm so glad I did! Planning to take some beans off it and repeat the performance. But next year I'm going to start it in late April! The beans it makes are edible, but they aren't much. But they make more scarlet runners, and that's a good thing.

Photo by Anne Babcock

 On the back patio, where one astute visitor located one of our copperheads in his favorite lair without being told where to look. It was nice to give people what might have been their first look at a wild (but very placid) copperhead.

We love the Faks.

Got a bit carried away with the hot crayon colored zinnias. I do that in early spring--go for the maximum color bombs.  Going to plant some gentler shades next year to balance things out. Tasha Tudor would be appalled at my gardens.

photo by Anne Babcock

A volunteer fancy sunflower in the vegetable garden.

The composites were showing well! Late summer is their domain.

A very cool thing happened while I was discussing bonsai culture. A digger or katydid wasp called Sphex nudus, one I've been watching for several days, came buzzing in with a freshly paralyzed leaf-rolling cricket (Camptonotus carolinensis).

 

I got extremely excited and managed to show the dramatic scene to the group. The wasp stings the cricket, paralyzing it, then drags it deep into a burrow it's dug, lays an egg on it, and lets its larva grow up eating the cricket from the inside out. What I'm wondering is just how many crickets that wasp stuffs into one burrow, because this has been going on for days. It's all I can do not to dig up the burrow to find out. And I wonder how it finds these crickets in their rolled-leaf shelters. It must have a search image for the shelters. I find the whole thing amazing. And the cricket preys on aphids! So. There are stories piled on stories here. I made the video below several days before the garden tour, before I figured out what the cricket was. And she was still stuffing crickets in the same burrow on Tour Day. It's all I can do not to dig it out to see how many crickets are down there!

photo by Anne Babcock. I'm telling the digger wasp story to some very interested young gardeners.

Photo by Debbie Bryant

Part of the fun of the whole day was meeting people I'd only known as names and profile photos on Facebook.
That was really cool. Debbie Bryant took a bunch of  photos that she's graciously allowed me to use.

Photo by Debbie Bryant

 In the hummingbird garden outside the studio.

A particularly nice framing of my Impatiens Stairs. That's a new thing this summer. I think it's going to be an annual event, because rabbits (at least mine) don't seem to eat impatiens! You'd think they'd be delicious. Here's to plants the rabbits don't eat. That includes cardinalflower and tuberoses. I told everyone that what they saw in the gardens is what the rabbits didn't eat.

Photo by Debbie Bryant

Photo by Debbie Bryant

 Debbie said her favorite part was climbing the tower and catching the views from on high. I never made it up there, being too busy flapping my gums, but Annie took it upon herself to be the tower guide, helping folks clamber up the folding tower stairs and get out onto towertop. Thank you, Angel.

Photo by Debbie Bryant



 Part of the fun of the whole event was growing plants for sale. I've always wanted to be a grower of special plants, and that dream came true this summer. I scrounged around the recycling center for just the right pots and got busy, growing dozens of my favorite Achimenes longiflora "Pink Nighty," Chrysanthemum "Sheffield Pink," native Ohio born and bred Cardinalflower, the magical fast-opening evening primrose, and  propagating a bunch of jewel orchids, too. It was pure fun. The Achimenes were a real project.

 
 I started them in April, and they were only just coming into bloom in late August. But they'll bloom hard until it gets cold, and they're worth it! I set up a store in the Groanhouse, which Phoebe had thoroughly cleaned out for me. I'm gonna miss that girl...

Cardinalflower babies, waiting for new homes.

Jewel orchids, ready to enchant.

 

Just inside the house was a bookstore with all the Zick bling you could ask for: books, puzzles, notecards, fine art prints. The 12:30 tour ended there. Those who wanted to climbed the tower. And the 2:00 tour started, a bit late, but I think everybody had a good time. By 5 pm the place was mostly cleared, and I was done crispy.

 I'm happy to say that the event helped defray the cost of buying two Macbooks, one for each kid. They'd been struggling along on 5 and 6-year-old laptops, and it was past time to upgrade. Buying two at once was a financial blow that I'm finding hard to juggle, given that my dual home HVAC system has chosen this summer to go to pot. As I write, I'm looking out the window at my friend Chuck,  an HVAC repairman, who is peering into the guts of an air conditioner. He probably ought to just stay here rather than go back to the shop; they break down that often. Add Liam's tuition bill and a couple of whamtastic car repairs, and writing and illustrating bird books, wonderful as it is, falls a bit short. Time to get creative with income streams.

Lots of folks who had to miss this Indigo Hill Garden Tour and Plant Sale are asking if it will happen again. I'll watch the weather. If we have another fabulous summer with gentle, perfectly spaced rains; if the gardens are looking extra-boffo next August, I may just do it. Most of the work I do toward the event is work I'd be doing anyway, and it sure is fun to share all this beauty with such appreciative people. To all those who made the drive, thank you!! I'm grateful to you for your support, and I hope you had as much fun as I did!